Bernard Berthold Boecker

Like most patrons seated on the ground floor at the Iroquois, sixty-three-year-old Bernard B. Boecker survived the 1903 theater fire. He was unique, however, in how long he chose to remain in the theater after the fire started.

Seated five rows from the back of the auditorium, Boecker was far enough from the stage to escape injury in the initial phase of the fire. Having seemingly attended the theater alone (nothing was reported about companions), he did not have loved ones to protect. So he stayed and watched. His observations were those of a man who had spent his life overseeing processes in a variety of manufacturing and agricultural operations and who had been an assistant fire marshal in his hometown. His description of the experience, prepared a week after the fire for his local newspaper, the Naperville Clarion, was more concise than many.

At first sight of a flame Boecker, like others, thought it was a lighting effect intended to look like the moon or sun. That was a logical possibility. The stage was darkened to produce a romantic garden scene under the moonlight. Either an enlarged moon or rising sun could have been in context with the storyline.

When he saw dancers turn to look up at the top of the proscenium arch, he knew it was instead a fire. Bernard remained in his seat to watch Eddie Foy (and three to four others) try to calm the audience. He remained in his seat while stage workers attempted to lower the asbestos curtain. He even watched the fireball shoot out into the auditorium, burning seats twenty feet away from his, and saw the asbestos curtain disintegrate into "hundreds of flaming balls the size of a boy's head."

Boecker's description of the fireball's trajectory through the auditorium supports the conclusion drawn later by fire experts. The fireball surged through the gap below the north side of the lopsided fire curtain, then was drawn up and back to the two balconies by vents in the back wall and open exits on both sidewalls. Before arcing upward, however, it ignited string instruments in the orchestra pit and seats in the first ten to twenty rows.

When the fire curtain burned, Boecker decided he'd seen enough. He noted a crowd waiting to exit the auditorium into the lobby and chose a north wall fire escape exit instead. He had no difficulty getting out into Couch Place alley but, once there, stumbled to his knees. He was shocked to realize he'd tripped over and fallen upon bodies.

As he tried to stand without treading on people, Bernard was knocked on the head and flattened by a man who had jumped from a fire escape twenty feet above.  As other jumpers landed, fearing for his life, Boecker wiggled out from under bodies and escaped from the alley.  Other witnesses to the Couch Place scene described jumpers surviving because they fell on a cushion of bodies.  Bernard Boecker was one of the cushion providers who survived to tell the tale.  Once safe, he looked back at a scene of screaming and horrified people on the fire escape stairs, and motionless forms on the ground.

Bernard Berthold Boecker (1840–1907)

A German immigrant, Bernard B. Boecker came to the United States in 1860. After working for a few years as a farm laborer, he returned to Germany to marry a French girl, Anna Ohm (1847–1886) and brought his bride back to Naperville, Illinois.

About thirty miles southwest of Chicago, Naperville in 1903 was home to around 3,000 people. Bernard was a VIP in that small pond, elected as mayor and alderman, also serving as assistant fire marshal, and in 1890 president of the Naperville Loan and Building Association.

Bernard and Anna had three children. Their youngest, Arnold, died in a terrifying buggy accident at the family's quarry. After Anna's death, Bernard married Emily Hammerschmidt, a union that produced four children, all of whom lived to old age. Emily's uncle and cousin, Ernst von Oven, and Frederick von Oven, operated a tile and brickyard company and nursery that were important in Naperville's early economic history.

Over the years, Bernard sold his farm and operated a lumber and hay press business. (A hay press was a machine used to convert hay purchased from farmers into bales that could be transported to market.) He later sold grain and coal, then in 1884 went into the stone quarrying business with Ernst von Oven, operating the "Little Quarry" (known in more recent decades as Netzley's Pond). His son Arnold's death at the quarry in 1896, together with increasing market competition, contributed to Bernard's decision to lease the quarry in 1904 to his competitor, Dolese & Shepard. D & S operated the larger quarry in Naperville, later known as Centennial Beach.